


Only Your Heartbeat Calms Me

by Akinasky



Series: Sterek Bingo 2018 [10]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek's Past, FBI Intern Stiles Stilinski, First Kiss, Light Angst, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Romantic Soulmates, Season/Series 06, Sexual Identity, Soulmates, Yes I am putting both because I can, sbheartbeat, sterekbingo2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 00:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14801273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akinasky/pseuds/Akinasky
Summary: Derek realizes that Stiles's heartbeat has always been true.





	Only Your Heartbeat Calms Me

**Author's Note:**

> The beginning of this little story is a little sad because it mentions canon Derek backstory stuff. So light angst maybe.

There was no denying that werewolves were all a part of the greater whole, whether turned or born, they all had the same instincts, same heightened senses and issues that come with all of that. They all had the same hunters chasing them and no matter what, they should have been at each other’s backs but if being part human had taught Derek anything, it was that sometimes being the same species didn’t keep them from self-destructing.

Derek knew after the years of dealing with Turned werewolves, that sometimes being the same didn’t make them the same. Turned werewolves had to learn control in a completely different way and they learned to shut down the heightened senses as opposed to Born werewolves who knew what it was like to have them all their lives.

One of the most important things to Derek and the Hale family was the sound of a packmate’s heartbeat, the beat of his alpha and mother. It was the foundation of comfort and calm. A heartbeat, more than anything else was a metronome of to live his life by and it was the best teller of the truth.

Until someone learned how to lie with their hearts.

Derek didn’t even know such a thing was possible until after tragedy struck, Kate’s heart had been calm and comforting like the people in his pack. Peter knew how to lie but Derek had learned early on not to trust his uncle and nothing could compare to the fire and losing most of his pack.

That was the day that Derek learned that he couldn’t trust the heart to tell the truth.

He spent the years after the fire listening to Laura’s heart day after day when she said they were going to be okay, that they would move one more time after the tenth move in three years and every time, he knew she was lying because her heart told him. He stopped listening to her heart, tried to block out the sound then when he found her cut in two and discarded in the woods he realized the depths of the betrayal he’d done to his sister. He stopped listening.

Derek should have gone with her to Beacon Hills, maybe she wouldn’t have been killed if she’d been with him but she knew that he didn’t want to be with her so Laura had gone alone and one more name was added to the list of deaths that he’d caused.

Because he couldn’t stand listening to her heart lie anymore.

Then came Scott’s judgmental truth and Dr. Deaton’s half-baked lies that didn’t count as lies because they weren’t the whole truth but a part of it. His heart told another story every time and Scott’s heartbeat said that he believed all the hateful things he said to Derek.

And why shouldn’t Scott hate Derek? It was his uncle who killed Laura and bit Scott against his will. Just another Hale failing a wolf.

The losses continued to pile up and Derek didn’t know if he could handle the stopping of one more heartbeat. And through it all, coming back to Beacon Hills and struggling with his new alpha powers and Scott being a little judgmental shit, the only heartbeat that ever made any sense belonged to one Stiles Stilinski.

Stiles, who had absolutely no sense of self preservation, would run towards danger if it meant saving someone he cared about. Derek and Stiles didn’t have the best first impression of each other, Derek was a surly werewolf that Scott blamed for all his troubles and Stiles was a stubborn teenager who smelled of desperation and desire all the time. It was a desire for acceptance, one that Derek recognized immediately and the kid’s heart was a terrible liar.

When he said he wasn’t scared of Derek, his heart told a different story and Derek just figured he was like all the rest then Stiles did the unexpected, he dropped the posturing and told Derek the truth. Stiles came to Derek’s aid over and over again and at some point, the hapless human’s heartbeat delved into Derek’s ears and settled somewhere in his soul.

That heartbeat, one that he could pick out in a crowd of people, became the new metronome of his life and though he wasn’t hardly ever in Stiles’s presence later, it never left him and became a Beacon in Derek’s heart.

But he had to leave, not just for his own sake but that of everyone else’s. Derek needed to believe in his own heart again, not depend on someone else’s, so he left. He found people who could teach him to listen to that rhythm inside his chest, taught him to meditate and ask forgiveness for himself and from himself.

But Stiles’s heartbeat never left the back of Derek’s mind leading him to seek out answers. Derek found himself standing before another Druid/Emissary, one that was an old friend of Derek’s mother.

“Emissary Daniels, you have heard what I have to say. What can you tell me?”

“Mr. Hale,” the woman started gently, “I think you know better than most what it means to _feel_ another person’s heartbeat on top of your own. You know that your mother had it with your father. I believe you know better than most what this is.”

Derek shook his head, “But it’s not like that, I was with women. I was never attracted to men. He can’t be what I imagine.”

Emissary Daniels smiled, “Have you ever tried? Had fantasies or imagined yourself with someone who would love you for you?”

Derek thought about all the heartbeats that had come and gone in his life, he’d been so in love with Paige but he’d jumped at the chance to erase her rhythm from his battered and broken heart. After Kate then the others, it stopped being about connection and love and started being about not getting hurt again. Derek knew that the only way to not get hurt was to not let them in. Sex was mechanical and necessary sometimes it was fun but not for him. He knew what those women wanted and he gave it to them, choking on their lust and hoping not to drown in it.

Derek shrugged finally, “I guess I don’t know much about myself after all.”

Emissary Daniels leaned forward and clasped her hand over one of his and patted gently, “There is always time to learn as long as we still breathe. Consider it now and find him. Tell him what you have learned and remember that being someone’s mate does not always have to be sexual. It is about what you need from each other and how you can make each other better.”

Derek nodded. Mates were not some magical and mystical connection that resulted in marks or first words or tattoos upon the skin. For a werewolf, a mate was someone that a werewolf knew and cared for, trusted and content to be with. It wasn’t mated at first sight, it took months and sometimes years to cultivated the bond. Sometimes it wasn’t about sex but most of the time it was. His mother and father were mated and they’d been happy for years until the fire.

When Stiles found him and saved him from the FBI, Derek knew he was there before he ever saw Stiles. He heard his heartbeat. That heartbeat was erratic and sometimes skipped a beat in a terrifying way but it never rose and fell in the years of their early “in going to tear your throat out with me teeth” days.

There was still comfort to be had so when he carried Stiles out of there and hid them away in one of the Hale safe houses. Derek wrapped Stiles’s foot, he still had all ten toes but the bullet caught him on the edge of his foot.

“Thank you for coming for me,” Derek whispered as he fixed the wrapping tightly before he patted the young man’s ankle and felt a little zing at the skin on skin contact.

Stiles smiled, staring at his foot in shock, “I shouldn’t have been out there, it was stupid. There is no reason I should have talked myself onto that squad.”

Derek smiled, “Of course you talked your way onto it. When I heard you were invited into the FBI I was really proud of you. Happy for you. Though I didn’t think you would go that route.”

Stiles shrugged, “I had the opportunity and I took it, I mostly needed to get out of Beacon Hills and this was the chance I needed.”

“You don’t want to go home? What about your dad?” Derek asked, he knew how much Stiles loved his dad and worried about him and Derek didn’t think that being across the country would make that any better.

Stiles shrugged, “He’s thinking of passing the torch, I’m hoping he will move out of that god forsaken town. I am going to do everything in my power to get him out of there.”

“Would nothing be enough to bring you back there?” Derek asked, thinking that he would never get to reclaim Beacon Hills for the Hale family but Derek would make the decision of his next step based on the living and not the dead.

“Are you going to go back there?” Stiles demanded, seemingly turning the conversation back on the werewolf.

“I was considering it but there are some things in the air before I can make that decision.”

“Oh?” Stiles asked.

Derek took a deep breath and moved to sit next to Stiles on the couch where he was laying, he pressed a gentle hand to Stiles’s knee and started, “I can hear your heartbeat.”

“Well yeah, you’re a werewolf and we’re literally sitting next to each other.”

“No,” Derek frowned severely and tried again, “I mean I can always hear it. I could hear it in a crowd of people, I can always hear it in my head and feel it under my ribcage. Do you know what that means? Did you ever find anything about that in your research into werewolves?”

Stiles squinted, like if he did so he would get the answer he was looking for, “I think I remember something about it but its been so long since I did werewolf research that had nothing to do with the Monster Killer of the week. What is it?”

Derek swallowed, his throat clicking a little, feeling parched and wishing he’d grabbed some water for them, “It means that I mated with you, its not some mystical thing and you don’t have to say anything in return and its not like it is in the stories. I trust you.”

Stiles sniffed a little and Derek looked down at his hands, ready to leave if needed. He would leave the house if that’s what Stiles needed. Maybe it wasn’t healthy but knowing what that heartbeat pumping in his soul meant had changed things for Derek, now it meant that keeping Stiles happy and safe meant more to him than a lot of other things.

“I trust you too, Der.”

“It doesn’t have to be about sex and stuff like that, I don’t even really know how I feel about that. I don’t have any experience in that area. Being mates, it can mean a lot of things.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” Stiles asked and Derek could here the amusement in his voice.

Derek looked up and Stiles was smiling, “You’re not freaked about this?”

“Der I have been pretty much in love with you for a long time now. I don’t know what any of this means either but I don’t want to be without you in my life. I wasn’t ever going to tell you because it was better to just be friends rather than not have you in my life. Seeing you on that goddamned monitor was a revelation.”

Stiles wasn’t lying, his heartbeat was steady and his scent was content.

“Can I try something, just for a second?”

Stiles nodded, “Whatever it is, the answer is yes.”

Derek moved up a little closer to Stiles on the couch, pressing his hand down on Stiles’s chest so he could feel the echo of Stiles’s heartbeat under his palm as he leaned forward and pressed a closed mouth kiss to the human’s lips. Stiles moaned quietly into the contact and Derek just tried to see what he was feeling. It was a strange sensation, Stiles had some stubble on his face and that was an odd sensation. It wasn’t bad and Stiles’s heart helped to keep him calm as he pulled away gently, even as Stiles tried to follow his lips. Derek pressed one quicker peck to Stiles’s mouth and moved back.

“That was nice,” Stiles husked then blinked his eyes open, “Was that nice?”

Derek smiled, “Can I be honest?”

“Please, but only if you are not going to let me down easily. Just rip off the Band-Aid if that’s what you’re going to do.”

Derek chuckled, his thumb rubbing gently back and forth on Stiles’s chest, “No Band-Aids to rip off just need some time with this. As I said, I never had any experience with guys and I don’t want to fuck this up.”

Stiles moved his hand to cup Derek’s cheek, “The feeling is mutual, SweetWolf.”

Derek smiled, thinking that of course Stiles’s heart wasn’t lying because Stiles didn’t lie to Derek no matter what they were talking about.

It was all in the heartbeat.


End file.
